A Word with Your Dad
by Dwyn Arthur
Summary: Jack Benson returns in iPear Store! And Freddie should know that if he hurts Sam, his dad will have something to say about it.


**Author's Note: Yes, Jack is back! If you haven't read "Father Knows Best," this story sits in that universe, where Freddie lives in his usual apartment with his mother Marissa and his father Jack. This story remains in canon with the exceptions of Jack's existence and the events of "Father Knows Best" replacing iLost My Mind. In this story, iPear Store has just taken place, and it looks like Freddie is needing some fatherly advice more than ever. Even if he doesn't know it yet.**

**Special thanks to my co-author and partner in crime, TheWrirInMe, for her suggestions on the plot and dialogue, and for pestering me so doggedly to have Jackson Daniel Benson I make another appearance.**

**As always, reading your reviews and comments always make the whole project more fun. Follow me on Twitter at DwynArthur.**

**Disclaimer: All Schneider's, none mine. Unless Schneider's Bakery goes public and I can manipulate the IPO.**

Attorney Jack Benson worked his way through the Thursday late lunchtime crowd on University Village Street in downtown Seattle, walking toward the Pear Store. His son Freddie had worked there until the previous weekend when he'd been fired. No one was giving Jack a reason, at least not one he could accept. Call it his lawyer's mind, or his father's intuition, but he knew there had to be more to the story than what he'd heard. If what Freddie had told him was true, the management at Pear had some serious explaining to do.

He knew that Freddie had been struggling to adapt to the sales aspect of his job—Freddie didn't seem to appreciate that designing computers and selling them retail were by no means the same thing—but he still thought it peculiar that his son had been fired for slow sales numbers after only a month. A quick search of the local business press had told Jack that the two Pear outlets in Seattle had rung up flat sales for months after a series of delays in the release of the latest pearPhone. Why would they single Freddie out? Jack wanted answers, and someone was going to give them to him – today!

Jack entered the store and told the associate who approached him he had an appointment with Natalie Harper, the store's manager. The associate showed him to the back, where the manager was waiting for him in her office. It was sparse, with little on the desk beyond a couple of pads of paper and a Pear desktop computer, the sign of a manager who spent most of her time on the floor and relatively little hidden away behind a desk. The middle-aged brunette looked up at Jack, and pointed at the chair in front of her desk, neither standing up nor saying a word.

"Ms. Harper, good afternoon. I'm Jackson Benson. We spoke on the phone," Jack began, handing the woman his card.

She looked at the card. "Attorney Jackson D. Benson. How about that? So what can I do for you on this fine day? I'm guessing you're not here to talk about the weather."

"Ms. Harper, I'm here as the legal representative of Fredward Benson, a former employee of your store. You terminated his employment for cause without stating such cause in writing, as the Washington Labor and Industry Code requires. In the interest of protecting my client's rights, I am requesting that you supply this cause to me now."

Natalie straightened in her seat. Not following up Freddie's firing with a letter could be an expensive mistake. One that her superiors would definitely not overlook. She had to fix this…and fast. She weighed her options. Clearly she wasn't dealing with some ambulance chaser that would be fooled by fancy words or batted eyelashes. She might as well go with the truth.

She didn't know the boy's father was a lawyer, and he was clearly looking for possible grounds to sue the Pear Company. However, she felt she had a clear reason to fire Freddie, and she had to use the meeting as an opportunity to cut off a lawsuit before the lawyer filed one.

"Your son obviously knows a lot about Pear products, I'm sure I don't have to tell you that." Jack made no move. "But I had to fire your son because of the way he behaved on the sales floor. He consistently lost patience with his customers, raised his voice to them, and, at one point, called a customer a 'moron,'. On top of that he was openly disrespectful to co-workers, specifically his supervisor, Ms. Puckett."

"Ms. Puckett?"

"Yes, Samantha Puckett. One of the best sales people I've ever employed. She was recently promoted to senior sales associate, in charge of the sales floor. Unfortunately, she resigned on us rather abruptly last weekend."

"I didn't realize she worked here. She's a close friend of my son." _Sam was working there too? How did that happen? Who worked there first? Freddie never said a word about that. And she was supervising him?_

Natalie raised an eyebrow. She could tell she'd caught Mr. Lawyerpants off guard. "Yes, she told me they'd dated. And she in fact resigned because she disagreed with my decision to fire him. You weren't aware?" she said, sitting a little straighter.

"No, I wasn't. Had she been working here long?"

"No, just a couple of weeks. Your son was already working here when I hired her."

_Sam has always tried to avoid part-time jobs, and she makes fun of computers. This makes no sense. Could she have taken the job only because Freddie was working here? _"I see. I have to admit that I admire anyone who would make a decision like that based on principle. In my work, I've seen few people who would do that."

"Yeah, whatever. She walked out. I can't tolerate that any more than I can tolerate one employee calling another a criminal in front of our customers."

"I beg your pardon? He called her a criminal?"

"He called her a number of things, screaming at her as well as at me." She grabbed the keyboard for her computer. "I ought to have the footage here from our security system. I remember it was around five in the afternoon on Saturday." She clicked her mouse several times, then turned her computer screen to face Jack and turned the speakers on.

Jack watched the tape, shocked at the spectacle. Freddie was storming around the store, building up to a crescendo where he yelled, "She's lazy, a _criminal_, and a nuisance, and she has terrible _table manners_!" his finger angrily pointed at Sam the entire time. As the footage continued he also saw Sam try to stop Freddie from leaving before turning back to the manager, ripping off her own badge, and strolling out of the store.

"I see. Talk like that in front of a judge and you'd be jailed for contempt."

"So you see Mr. Benson, my hands were tied. I didn't like doing that. I've fired employees before, but usually because they fired themselves by never turning up for work. Whatever the relationship between those two is, she clearly has a knack for getting under his skin. In retrospect, it was an error in judgment to make her the direct supervisor of someone she was close to. It cost me two employees."

Jack had heard enough and left the store with Ms. Harper's promise to send Freddie's paperwork to Jack's office by the next day, but by this point, Jack no longer cared about Freddie's job. Of course, the girls would have something to do with his firing. He had to concede this much to his wife. Marissa had said this situation had Carly and 'that Puckett girl's' names all over it. Freddie's life was generally nice and quiet until his two best friends got involved. Still, he was shocked at Freddie's outburst. Freddie was often cruel to Sam when they were younger, but it was usually in response to Sam provoking him with pranks and insults. This went beyond anything he had ever seen from Freddie, and it showed just how badly Freddie was hurting from his breakup with Sam.

Freddie and Sam dated for a couple of months, and the two of them seemed happy. Sam spent lots of time visiting their apartment, and was a frequent dinner guest who gave Jack numerous excuses to avoid his wife's tofu-based cooking. They had their bumps in the road, but they made it through a couple of serious fights and forgave each other.

Then Jack had to go to Spokane for two weeks to work on a corporate bankruptcy. Spacecations, the firm run by eccentric billionaire Richard Blanton that organized iCarly's near-webcast from space, went bankrupt under multiple allegations of bank fraud. One of Seattle's largest banks retained Jack's firm to help it recover what it could of the tens of millions that Blanton owed it, and Jack needed to travel to attend the proceedings. The trip was successful, but Jack returned home to find his son back in his pre-Sam funk, his romantic life in a shambles that he didn't seem to want to talk about. "It's over." That's all he could get out of him. Marissa was no help-she hadn't even bothered to tell him about it while he was away, and seemed almost happy that Freddie and Sam were history. After a few weeks, Freddie finally talked to him about what happened. Freddie told him of his frustration, that he felt he had let Sam talk him into breaking up because of something Carly said about Spencer and a girlfriend of his.

He and Sam remained friends, and in fact, Freddie thought they quickly reverted to their established ways of treating each other. But never once did Sam mention her relationship with Freddie, and always changed the subject when Freddie tried to bring it up. Right after the breakup, Freddie consoled himself with the thought that it was temporary; eventually they'd come back together. But as time went on, it seemed more and more that the breakup was permanent, and Jack could see Freddie turn morose. Even worse, he saw him courting disaster by trying to flirt with Carly again. Jack knew that something bad was bound to happen, and was not entirely surprised that Freddie finally vented. He just wished he hadn't decided to do it at work.

* * *

He wanted to take the boy by the shoulder and shake some sense into him, but he'd always prided himself on gently guiding Freddie, letting him make his own decisions with Sam. He thought he meddled enough in bringing them together, but if Freddie was starting to become that spiteful in front of other people, it was time for another "pep talk," before he ruined his friendship with Sam completely. So after dinner that night, as Freddie worked alone in his room, Jack went across the street to the Groovy Smoothie. He had his usual small talk with T-Bo (the shopkeeper was disappointed to see his former hometown basketball team having playoff success in another city), then carried blueberry and mango smoothies past Lewbert, who watched Jack pass by in silence, and into the elevator to the eighth floor.

Freddie had indeed finished his homework for the evening, and was looking at something online when Jacked knocked on his door and held up a smoothie, his traditional sign for wanting to talk about something. He stepped inside the room and nudged the door shut behind him, handed Freddie the blueberry smoothie, and sat down.

"What's up, Dad?" Freddie asked, eyeing the smoothie.

"I went to the Pear Store today, and I talked to the manager."

Busted.

"She showed me the security tapes, Freddie. You deserved to be fired after the way you spoke to those customers, as well as to your manager. You didn't tell me Sam worked there with you."

Freddie sighed. "Yeah, she showed up one day with Carly and Gibby right after I started, and she butted into one of my sales. She talked a woman into buying a pearBook, and Natalie pulled her aside and hired her! Just like that, no interview, no training, nothing! And then she starts treating her like she's the golden girl of Pear or something – like I was nothing! You know Sam, Dad! Since when does she help people? Or work? Then like a week later, she makes her the supervisor, and already has her writing my evaluation! Sam! Evaluating me! She doesn't even know the first thing about what's inside a computer! Why would they trust her around the invent…"

"Freddie," Jack interrupted. "This is what we need to talk about. I don't think the job really matters anymore. I hope you've learned a lesson about public decorum, and what happens when you get a little too full of yourself. Remember that at your next job. I heard the way you spoke to Sam. That was more than you losing your temper. You were trying to hurt her, calling her useless and a criminal. I know you don't really feel that way, do you?" He didn't wait for an answer as Freddie hung his head shamefully. "Then after you left, she defended you, and quit her job for you. What's the matter with you? What happened to you being best friends?"

"She doesn't even want to be friends anymore, Dad. She acts like we never even dated, like it was something I was trying to _force_ on her. I try to talk about it, and she won't let me. Then she flirts with that guy from One Direction and takes him into the elevator right in front of me! 'I'm not seeing anyone, just putting that out there'" he said, mimicking Sam's voice. "And she worked at the restaurant with Gibby, spending all kinds of time with him. Gibby! She always tormented Gibby even worse than me, now they're best buddies? I just don't get it! What happened to working on things, taking some time, and trying again? She started this back at the lock-in, then wants to walk away and act like it never happened!"

"Have you talked to Sam? Told her she's making you feel this way?"

"No, there's no point. She won't talk to me."

Jack groaned audibly. "Won't talk to you, Freddie? Why did she take the job at the store and quit once you left? Do you think it was ever her dream to work for Pear? She just wanted to be around you! She isn't acting as if things are finished!"

"She likes other guys! She's moved on!"

"Moved on? To a singer in a band? Come on, since when do celebrity crushes count for anything? Freddie, you were telling me about that blonde country singer, Jennette something, right? You showed me her video. You were thrilled as anything when she followed you back on Twitter and wrote to say she knew about iCarly! You were excited for a couple of hours then moved on. Now you say it's awkward knowing she can read everything you tweet. And Gibby? Sam and Gibby as a couple? Sam likes being around food! I can see her being a chef or running a restaurant one day. You're her best friend, you should be encouraging her, not complaining.

Freddie shook his head miserably, "I believed her Dad. I believed her when she said she loved me."

"And you're so sure she doesn't now?" Freddie was silent, "Have your actions given her any reason to believe that _you_ meant it when you said you loved _her_? I see you following Carly around again, looking for excuses to spend time over in her apartment. Is that what you want, to beg Carly to go out with you after all?" Freddie shook his head, "I didn't think so. You're simply trying to make Sam jealous, and doing it in the way that you know will cause her the most pain, by mooning over her best friend. On top of that, you wave her time in juvie in her face in front of her boss and colleagues! You're hurting her deliberately, picking at every insecurity you know she has. Not long ago, you were telling your mother and me how much you loved her. Is that the way you treat someone you love?"

Freddie didn't even look at Jack, just stared at the floor. He had let his relationship with Sam deteriorate to the point that they couldn't even talk. With graduation approaching, he risked their drifting away from each other forever. Just the thought of his world without Sam in it was unbearable. "Dad, what can I do? I don't see why she'd talk to me at this point."

"Actually, Freddie, I do," replied Jack. "The two of you have had a rocky friendship so much of the time, but what has kept you going is that when you've hurt each other, you always apologized, and you always forgave each other. So what can you do? You can talk to her! Sam won't turn you away. So you go to her, and you beg her to forgive you for showing your anger by hurting her. You get down on your knees if you have to. Fortunately, I don't think you're going to have to do that. My guess is you'll be forgiven the second you ask her. You've done it for her. She'll do it for you. Then you talk to her, Freddie, like you did after the lock-in. Tell her what you're feeling about your friendship. And if all this tension is about your fear that you're not getting back together, talk to her about that, too."

Hearing his wife calling his name, Jack grabbed his smoothie, patted Freddie's shoulder and headed toward the bedroom door.

"Love sucks," Freddie said, leaning back in his desk's chair.

Jack laughed knowingly as he walked into the living room. Freddie was only seventeen – he didn't know the half of it.

* * *

The following night, Jack left his apartment with trash bags in both hands, taking them to the chute at the end of the corridor. As he closed the door to his apartment, he heard the Shays' door open behind him. He turned around and saw Sam Puckett emerge.

"Hi, Jack," Sam said to him softly, not looking him directly in the eye.

"Hello to you, Sam. Marissa and I haven't seen that much of you lately."

Sam nodded without saying anything.

"It's late," Jack continued. "Are you heading home?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "I need to check on Frothy. Mom won't always feed him if I'm not there."

"How are you getting home?"

"I'll walk. It won't take long."

"You're not walking, Sam. Let me get rid of these bags, and then I'll get my keys."

To Jack's surprise, Sam stood and waited for him. She treasured her independence. Normally, she would wait until Jack turned his back, and head for the elevator on her own. But she either appreciated the ride, or perhaps wanted to talk to him. He hoped it was the later. Jack disappeared into his apartment for a few seconds, emerged wearing his jacket, and pointed toward the elevator to the parking garage.

Five minutes later, they were in Jack's hybrid, headed for Sam's house. The drive only took a few minutes, so Jack had to act quickly.

"How have you been, Sam?"

"I'm fine. We're doing iCarly tomorrow night."

"Freddie talked about your rehearsal. What else have you been up to?"

"Nothing, really."

"I heard you got a job-at the Pear Store."

Sam looked over at Jack. "How much do you know?"

"Pretty much everything. I went to talk to Natalie about Freddie getting fired, and she told me you were working there, too. Sounds like it didn't work out."

Sam shrugged, not wanting to make a big deal of it. "I didn't like the way she treated Freddie. She decided right away she didn't like him, and once she did, he didn't have a chance. I didn't want to work in a place like that."

"By that you mean a place where Freddie no longer worked, right?" Jack turned to Sam and smiled.

Sam lowered her head and nodded. "Things are bad, Jack. I can't talk to Freddie without us fighting." She paused. "I miss him."

Jack smiled. Things were fixable after all. "I think he misses you too, Sam. As a matter of fact, I know he does. There are some unresolved things between the two of you, aren't there?"

"He likes Carly again."

"You can't actually believe that Sam. Can you?" He looked at Sam who was staring out the passengers' side window. "Listen, I know it's not my place to get involved with this. You and Freddie need to work it out yourselves. But this isn't about Carly. And it isn't about what happened at the Pear Store either. Have the two of you had a good, honest conversation since you broke up?"

"No."

"You need to. Back when you started dating, you'd talk to each other for hours on end, and it seemed to help you through anything. You stopped talking to each other honestly, and that's why your friendship is in trouble." Jack turned into the Puckett driveway and unlocked the doors. "You'll talk?"

"Yeah," Sam answered as she got out of the car. "Thanks Jack, for the ride and…everything. You're like the only cool adult I know besides Ted…and Spencer, but I don't think he counts." She laughed. "Night."

"Good night, Sam," Jack said, and waited for Sam to enter the house before leaving. So they both felt bad about the way things had were, and both were anxious to do something about it. As he drove home, Jack felt hopeful. Their friendship was still there. The ball was in Freddie's court.

* * *

Two nights later, everyone was across the hall at the studio, finishing up the weekly shooting of iCarly. Freddie couldn't say if that week's show had been memorable. He has been working on the show for so long that he could carry out his responsibilities with little deliberate thought, and his mind was altogether elsewhere during tonight's show. He kept his eyes on Sam the entire time, something he had avoided for several weeks, since every time he looked anywhere near her direction, she would look away. But tonight, she didn't. When he looked at her, she looked back. Even though she didn't smile, and if anything, her face seemed to have a hurt look on it, she wasn't trying to reject his attention or ignore him. Keeping in mind what his father kept saying to him all week, Freddie decided that it was time to make his move.

Circumstances were, thankfully, in Freddie's favor. Usually, after the show, everyone would go to the Groovy Smoothie together, but that wouldn't be the case this week. Carly had met another of her "cute boyfriends of the week," and was about to meet him to see a movie. Spencer had simply disappeared right after the webcast ended. Gibby, on the other hand, stayed true to form by not leaving without a weird story. Moving on from Tasha's final departure from his life to pursue some sort of vague modeling career, Gibby too had met a young lady during the past week, and was to meet her in the neighborhood park. They were playing some sort of live action game where everyone dressed as fairies, elves, gnomes and the like, geeky even by Freddie's standards. Gibby asked Freddie if he could take the wings he had used to "fly" in a previous iCarly segment that ended with him face down on the floor, semi-unconscious. He didn't want the cables that snapped in half during the stunt, so Freddie saw no harm. He still made sure Gibby understood (or said he understood) that the prop wings would not enable him to fly.

That left him alone with Sam in the hallway outside the Shays' front door. He would probably never have as good an opportunity to talk to Sam alone. Sam began to walk toward the elevator, and Freddie called out to her back.

"Sam!" She turned around without walking back toward him.

"What?"

"Where are you going?"

"Home." She resumed her walk toward the elevator.

"Sam, wait." She stopped and turned around again, a scowl on her face. "Are you doing anything tonight?"

"I just told you. I'm going home." She again moved toward the elevator.

Freddie ran ahead of her, stopping in her path. "I thought maybe we could go somewhere, have dinner, and talk."

"Talk? About what? My table manners? Or about how much Carly suddenly means to you again?" She pushed past him and pressed the down button on the elevator.

Freddie reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled back in front of him. He knew this was risky. Sam was always awkward about being touched, even while they were dating, and she especially despised being grabbed. But she didn't pull away from him.

"What do you want, Freddie?" She said his real name in a tone of exasperation.

Freddie sighed and softened his voice. "Sam, we really need to talk."

"I don't have anything to say." She wasn't going to make this easy.

"Okay fine, but I need to talk." She stared at him, one hand on her hip.

"Okay, so talk."

He took tentative steps towards her. "I don't like how things have been between us, and it's my fault they've gotten this way. I mean, no matter what happened between us, I thought we would at least stay friends, best friends, but now that's slipping away and I just…I want to fix it, if I can. Can I please … have some time with you?"

Sam paused and looked at the floor. "Okay," she said as she looked up. "You said dinner, right? So you'll be treating me to my favorite kind of food."

"Free?"

"You got it, nerd boy."

"I was kind of counting on it," Freddie replied with a half-smile. "Just let me get my coat." Freddie disappeared into his apartment for about thirty seconds, emerging with his jacket and car keys.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked him.

"It's a surprise. You'll like it."

Forty-five minutes later, they were sitting in the Silver Lasso, one of Sam's favorite buffets. It advertised all you could eat food, including several kinds of meat grilled on demand, and offered a "two eat for twenty" special. Some girls might take a guy's willingness to spend money on them as a barometer of his interest, but not Sam. She took particular joy in obtaining food cheaply, even when she wasn't the one paying. She sat in front of Freddie with two heaping plates of food from the buffet, along with another filled with grilled chicken and a pork chop. But contrary to form, she was taking small bites, ensuring she closed her mouth while she chewed, and taking care not to spill any food from her plates onto the table. To Freddie, this was another reminder of how his words had hurt her, and why he needed to set things right with her so urgently.

Yet Freddie realized that a crowded restaurant was not the place to have a conversation that might turn emotional. Dinner was something of a peace offering, and the chance to do something that would remind them of the better times in their friendship. So Freddie tried to turn the conversation away from their recent arguments, talking about school. They mostly talked about the restaurant Sam and Gibby had opened in the school basement, which that week had been closed for renovations after just a few weeks in service. Freddie did not know why, since he heard Principal Franklin liked both the food and the initiative Gibby and Sam and shown. Sam explained to him that the restaurant could not remain open indefinitely on school property without more formal arrangements, so Ted had decided it would be a project of the new Culinary Arts club, where, under a new name, it would be an official part of Ridgeway. It would have brand new equipment, full business licenses (Freddie hadn't known that Ted had called his father to help with all the legal requirements), it would pay taxes, and part of the closing was for a thorough cleaning so it would pass a King County health inspection. Freddie was impressed, and he saw the excitement in Sam's eyes as she talked about the restaurant. He had been so caught up in drama and self-pity that he never realized the restaurant meant something to her.

They left the restaurant a while later, the mood between them much lighter than it had been in months, and Freddie drove Sam home. He parked in her driveway, and walked with her to the front door, motioning for her to sit next to him on the front stoop, which she did.

Freddie turned to her and looked her in the eye.

"So…tonight was fun."

"Yeah. We, uh, haven't done that since…"

"Since we broke up. Since you started to hate me."

"Who said I hate you? I don't hate you Freddie."

"I wouldn't blame you if you did," he said softly. "Sam, listen. I'm … really sorry. For how I've been acting since we broke up. For what I said about you in the store. I deserved to be fired. I'm sorry for trying to embarrass you in front of everyone else. And I'm sorry for using Carly to try to make you jealous. I was trying to hurt you, and that was wrong. It's not how you treat your friends – especially not your best friend. And you _are_ my best friend – still. At least, I hope you'll still want to be."

He looked up at Sam's face, and saw her smiling at him softly, giving him a bit more courage to continue.

"Sam, I know we had our reasons for saying what we did that night in the elevator. Things between us were going too fast, and I was the one forcing you. I'm sorry for that too. I was just so afraid you would change your mind. So I rushed things. I think we did need to take a step back and slow down." He looked her in the eyes, his heart pounding. "But … I always thought that after some time, we could give it another try, and that doesn't seem to be happening, and honestly, that's scaring me. I'm afraid that we're finished, that I won't get another chance. So I panicked and started doing anything I could think of to get your attention, and everything I did was absolutely wrong. I just ... I guess I'm just not ready to let you go."

Still looking him directly in the eye, Sam responded slowly, "so … are you saying you want to get back together? Do you think you're abnormal enough? Or I'm normal enough?" she laughed softly.

"Let's face it, things with us will never be perfect. You'll always be a little abnormal and I'll always be a little too normal. But that doesn't change the fact that I want to be with you. So, yes, I want us to be back together. But this time, no rushing. And we listen to ourselves, no one else." He turned to look at her. "Remember that first day, here at your house, when I said we were friends above all, and we were just adding something to it? I didn't do that, and I stopped treating you like my best friend. I want our friendship back most of all. I want us to spend time together again, just us. We can deal with all the other stuff later."

Sam held out her hand, and Freddie took it. "But, what you said to me that night…"

"Sam, I still love you. More than ever."

She reached out and wrapped her arms around him, and Freddie could feel her tears against his face. "Me too. More than ever," she said while crying. Freddie paid no attention to the time as he held her for what felt like an hour. Things weren't close to being the way they were before the breakup—he didn't feel ready to try to kiss her yet—but they were finally moving in the right direction for the first time in a long time.

Finally, Freddie whispered in her ear that it was time to say goodnight. He helped her up as they turned toward the door and said "I'm just glad we're friends again."

"Again?" Sam answered. "We never stopped. Remember when you said to me after the lock-in, 'you're going to have to do a lot more than that to get rid of me.' Well, right back at you."

Freddie smiled. "So, will you be at Carly's tomorrow morning?"

"Tomorrow's Saturday. Spencer always makes bacon on Saturday morning. Do the math."

"Well, I guess I'll see you there." Sam went into her house and closed the door, the grin never leaving her face.

* * *

Two weeks later, Jack walked from the kitchen into the living room after cleaning up after dinner. Marissa was working the overnight shift at the hospital, so he and Freddie had been on their own to eat. Jack picked up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home from his office, and Freddie got a movie from the Greenbox outside the Groovy Smoothie. They had not quite begun their evening when none other than Sam Puckett knocked at the door.

Jack walked to the couch and handed Freddie a sandwich on plate. "I figured you'd want some dinner."

"Yes, I would. Thanks." Freddie took the plate and looked at Sam's head on his lap. She quickly fell asleep once the movie began. He looked back at his father. "Food coma."

"She has quite the timing, doesn't she? Along with quite the appetite. And sense of timing." Jack's advice to Freddie had paid off. He didn't know what exactly Freddie did, but Sam started coming back to their apartment, and her visits were once again daily. And from Sam's position on the couch, he saw that she and Freddie were beginning to show affection outwardly again. She was in a good mood, and not just because Jack had told her during dinner that the city had approved the Ridgeway restaurant's business license.

"I know she can try your patience, Dad, but it's good having her here again, invited or not. She even knocks."

"I'm glad to see you spending time together again. I still don't understand who the two of you broke up, but you eventually put things right."

"Yeah, we just needed to talk. Thanks, Dad. You've saved the day for me twice now. What time is it?"

"It's nearly eleven, and it's pouring rain out there."

"I should wake her up and get her home." Freddie paused. "Listen, Dad, would it be okay if she stayed here? She's been sick a couple of times this year after getting caught in the rain."

Jack paused and thought. Marissa would truly despise this, but he didn't see the point of waking Sam and getting her home through a storm. "In the spare room, Freddie. You're under my roof, yadda, yadda. And you were telling me you're taking it slow. When they wake up in your bed, it changes everything."

Freddie nudged Sam awake and guided her up the hallway, showing her into the spare bedroom and gathering an old pair of pajamas and the set of towels and toiletries he had long set aside for her.

Jack sighed and began to clean off the coffee table. There was the next issue for him and Marissa to deal with. He had been wondering how long it would be until sleepovers became a question. Sam wouldn't be willing to go over to the Shays' at the end of every evening forever. In the meantime, he has glad to see the two of them in such good spirits. The cloud that had been over Freddie and his friends for months seemed gone, and Freddie seemed to have learned his lesson. At least until the Benson family's life turned into a sitcom yet again.

**A/N 2: I've been honored with an invitation to join The Cabal, an incredibly group of talented writers and an all-around incredible group of people. I love standing next to them because it makes be look better. And so:**

**Read**

**~The CABAL~**

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**From fluff, to face melting angst.**

**The Cabal authors produce the best.**

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